Nearly 700 Sandberg's From a Former Astros Minor League Pitcher
The highlight of Saturday's mail came inside a priority mail box with two 330-count boxes filled with Ryne Sandberg cards.
Last week, a post in a baseball card group left me in shock with the sheer size of a Kirby Puckett collection.
That's 112,000 cards of Kirby Puckett. I can understand how many cards that is because it wasn't too long ago I was at that mark with Cubs cards. This is a collection of a single player.
Eric Smith is the owner of this Puckett super collection, and more on him in a bit. He was asking to swap for Puckett cards, and knowing I have a pretty sizeable lot reached out. We agreed to trade Puckett for Ryne Sandberg, and after diving into my star boxes came up with 631 Kirby cards.
The box arrived and Eric tossed in a few extras. In total, 678 Sandberg cards were added to my collection.
I'm now at the point that the only Sandberg's needed are Oddballs and inserts, and there were seven new cards for my collection.
Now, onto a story about my trading partner. I noticed his Facebook profile listed some baseball related jobs, including pitcher at the Houston Astros. A quick search found there was a pitcher with the same name in the Astros organization in the 1990's, so I had to ask.
Yes, he's one in the same. In fact, Eric's 1996 season was with the Quad City River Bandits (pictured above) and was probably on the mound at some point with me in the crowd at John O'Donnell Stadium (now Modern Woodmen Park). I grew up thirty minutes from the stadium and often went to Angels and River Bandits games. If you're looking to trade off Kirby Puckett in exchange for a player drop me an email and I can connect you.
Another box arrived via Facebook group trade with Wayne in Florida. We swapped medium flat rate boxes with me sending a mix of Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, and Barry Larkin cards. He sent 3,250 Cubs cards.
Wayne and I are already putting together a second trade in which I'll send a mix of football teams, Manny Ramirez, Chris Sabo, and Orel Hershiser cards.
The third package in the mail was a onesey. It was another purchase using eBay Bucks. I used my eBay Bucks to go shopping for various Heritage Minors variations and Bowman Chrome autographs. I was surprised to find Chrome autos at great prices, and the first that came was Brendon Little. He has a great signature.
Finally, it was the last day of Target's coupon that gave you $25 off a $100 toy purchase (sports cards fall into the toys category). So, I picked up three blasters of Panini Chronicles, two blasters of Topps Fire, and to get me over the $100 bump a pack of Topps Archives. A total of eleven Cubs cards were pulled including a gold Parallel of Anthony Rizzo in Topps Fire, along with a red parallel of Ernie Banks.
One Million Cubs Project Stats
Saturday's (10/13/2018) Cards: 3,940
Saturday's (10/13/2018) Packages: 4
Weekly Count: 8,261
Total Count: 169,047